A Low-Noise and High-Accuracy Transimpedance Amplifier Exploiting Power-on-Calibration Technique for LiDAR

Abstract

A low-noise and high-accuracy transimpedance amplifier (TIA) for light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system is proposed in this article. A power-on-calibration (POC) technique is proposed to improve the transimpedance gain accuracy of single-channel TIA and eliminate the transimpedance mismatch of multichannel TIAs. The noise canceling technique is adopted to improve the circuit sensitivity. Implemented and fabricated in a 0.18-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> standard CMOS technology, the whole circuit consumes 39.6 mW with a 3.3-V supply, where the TIA core circuit and output buffer consume 29.7 and 9.9 mW, respectively. The measured transimpedance gain and bandwidth of the TIA are 86 dB<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> and 240 MHz, respectively. The achieved input-referred noise current is 3.1 pA/<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sqrt {\mathrm {Hz}} $ </tex-math></inline-formula>. A linear dynamic range of 66 dB has been obtained with a minimum detectable signal (MDS) of 500 nA [signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) &#x003D; 10] and an output-amplitude error less than 20&#x0025;. In addition, the measured small-signal gain error is reduced from &#x00B1;40&#x0025; to less than &#x00B1;5&#x0025; due to the proposed POC technique.